This invention relates to an additive for frozen surimi (ground fish meat) for deodorizing or removing the smell.
Frozen surimi is a product prepared by collecting fish meat from raw fish such as wall-eye pollack to give a picked meat, washing the picked meat with clean water 2 or 3 times or several times in some cases, if necessary, adding a small amount of sodium chloride to the last washing water, removing the black skin by a refiner in case of need, dehydrating by a screw press, mixing the resultant fish meat with a sugar or sugar alcohol and a polyphosphate, packing and freezing the resultant surimi followed by storing at -20.degree. C.--30.degree. C. The frozen surimi is thawed at use and processed to surimi based products such as kamaboko, chikuwa and the like.
Recently, fishing boats often go far away for catching of fish such as walleye pollack because of restriction of fishing grounds. It sometimes needs about 10-14 days from fish catch to landing. As the result, the commercial value of surimi markedly decreases because the freshness becomes remarkably lower and strong smell of walleye pollack is noted. Additionally, freshness of the swarming red meat fish (e.g. mackerel, sardine or jack mackerel) decreases more swiftly compared with the white meat fish such as walleye pollack and bad effects such as remarkably bad color tone, lowering of gel formation ability and strong smell of fish are recognized when the surimi is prepared because of the higher fat content and the more blood-colored meat. The smell of fish is especially so strong that the utility for surimi based products is limited.
As the conventional method for deodorizing or removing the fish smell of surimi of fish meat, there are known a masking method adding perfumes or alcohol extracts of plants or a deodorizing method utilizing a property forming a clathrate compound by cyclodextrin.
The masking agents such as a perfume and the like have a problem of perfume odor or alcohol smell although fish smell disappears. Cyclodextrin is expensive and has a disadvantage that the product gives fish smell when heated.